Video surveillance systems are currently used to video record areas requiring protection from intruders, unauthorized use, criminal activities, etc. When an improper activity occurs in the protected area, investigators can view the video recording of the protected area in order to develop evidence useful in detecting and/or successfully prosecuting those who engaged in the improper activity.
However, finding a segment of the surveillance video that relates to the improper activity is laborious and time consuming. The video recordings acquired by current video surveillance systems contain only images captured by video cameras. Therefore, all or a substantial part of the surveillance video must be viewed in order to find the relevant segment. Current video surveillance systems do not also record or otherwise capture data annotations from other sources of information that would make it easier to find relevant video segments. Hence, when current video recordings are searched during an investigation, current video search methods rely only on temporal data and visual cognition of the viewer, which makes searches laborious, time consuming, and sometimes ineffective.
The present invention involves annotating video recordings with data from other sources. Such data annotations are synchronized or linked to the video recordings and can enable a user to more easily locate video segments of interest.
SUMMARY OF THE INVESTIGATION
In accordance with one aspect of the present invention, a surveillance system comprises a camera, an input device, and a server. The camera is arranged to output images of a protected area. The input device is arranged to provide a data annotation. The server is arranged to synchronously store the images and the data annotation so that the data annotation can be used to search for a segment of the images.
In accordance with another aspect of the present invention, a method comprises the following: storing surveillance video in a memory; storing data annotations in the memory, wherein the data annotations are useful in searching for a video segment of the surveillance video of interest; and, synchronizing the stored data annotations to the corresponding video segments of the stored video so that the data annotations can be used to search for the video segment of interest.
In accordance with still another aspect of the present invention, a surveillance method comprises the following: capturing images of a protected area; storing the images in a computer readable memory; storing data annotations in the computer readable memory, wherein the data annotations are searchable using a search criteria; and, storing a link that links the stored data annotations to corresponding image segments of the stored images so that the data annotations can be used to search for an image segment of interest.